


a moment in between (a second to breathe)

by brosura



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Ignis Spoilers, Gen, Kinda, Out of Body Experiences, starting 2018 right with some angst and Good Dad Regis in the astral plane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 02:09:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brosura/pseuds/brosura
Summary: In his desperation to save Noctis, Ignis wears the Ring of the Lucii and finds himself in the company of the past kings of Lucis.Or rather, just the one.





	a moment in between (a second to breathe)

**Author's Note:**

> basically wrote this bc i was sad that when That Happened in episode ignANGST, i didn't get an artful freezeframe/out of body experience where ignis could talk to the past kings and tell them where to stick their grapes/hang out with ~~dad~~ regis one more time like nyx did in kingsglaive. and here we are! happy 2018!

The metal of the ring is deceptively cold as it slips over his finger, but the searing pain that follows is immediate and all-consuming.

It burns quickly from his arm to the rest of his body before focusing to a blinding point on the sockets of his eyes. For a moment, Ignis thinks that this is how he will die.

It’s something he’s not surprised by. A part of him was expecting this to happen. He isn’t of royal blood, he wasn’t meant to wear this ring.

But he had hoped he might be enough.

Even if it cost him everything.

He had hoped.

_Forgive me, Noctis._

The pain recedes just as suddenly as it had spread. It boils down to a simmering thing, painful, but not so intense. A thrumming in his wrist, between his brows.

His squeezed-shut lids flutter open against the pain and he’s surprised that he’s able to open them at all.

But what he sees doesn’t quite convince him that he’s alive.

What he sees is  _himself,_ frozen in a moment of familiar pain.

The other him still has his eyes squeezed shut, hands coming up inhumanly slow to claw at his eyes. His back is straight and taut, but he can see the way his knees start to give way. But when Ignis looks downward, he can still see himself, see his own hands, the skin around the ring growing grey like ash and pulsing with a strange light.

“You aren’t dying, Ignis,” he hears from a familiar voice, cutting off the thought that had already started to form in his mind.

“Y-your Majesty, is that-?!” he says, voice cracking with emotion and surprise, and turns to find him there, smiling like the day he’d bid them farewell.

“You aren’t dying,” King Regis repeats, his eyes twinkling. _“I_ would know.”

“I-” he chokes, unsure what to say.

He’d never gotten the chance to mourn, not truly. There were so many things to be done, so many things bearing down on Noctis the way they’d circled like vultures around his father. But he remembered the grief, remembered the way it had etched itself in Noct’s face, the way it had dug out something hollow in Ignis’ gut that he’d had to ignore to press on.

Ignis had always been a practical man, a realist. But somehow - perhaps because he didn’t want to believe it a possibility - he never thought that Regis would die so soon.

“No need for that,” Regis says, laying a warm hand on Ignis’ shoulder. “This isn’t the time for apologies or regrets. I sent you away, there is nothing you need blame yourself for.”

“But why?” Ignis finds himself asking anyway in a rough, wavering voice. “If we had- If Noctis is- Then _maybe-”_

“You were always a bright boy, Ignis,” Regis gives him a sad smile, but it doesn’t last. His face is somber as he continues, “But there are things that you cannot understand with what you know, things that I cannot answer in a way that you will find satisfactory in what little time we have.”

Ignis follows the King’s gaze and sees his own body, still falling eerily slow. He’s nearly to his knees now. He can’t see his eyes past where his body has his palms pressed against them, but the way the other him twists his mouth in a silent scream is testament enough to the pain his body must be going through. A pain he somehow doesn’t feel.

Distantly, his hand throbs.

“The others, they… cannot be swayed,” Regis says with a twitch of a frown that Ignis recognizes as frustration, and Ignis understands what he means.

The past kings of Lucis. He supposes Regis is already among their ranks now. It hurts, sometimes, knowing that he’s technically incorrect whenever he calls Noctis _your highness._ Maybe one day there will come a time when the words _Your Majesty_ don’t sit so heavy on his tongue.

“This is the most I could get them to allow. A moment’s respite from the worst of the pain. I only hope it doesn’t burden you much to see my face again.” Regis gives him one last apologetic smile, one last mischievous twinkle in his kind eyes, then his expression becomes grim and tired. Almost resigned. “They will take something from you: a price for calling upon their power.”

“Then it is a price I accept,” Ignis manages to say. His voice cracks, but he means every word. “If it’s to protect Noctis, I will gladly pay it.”

“Brave words, for one so young. It is true that you were not meant to wear the ring. But,” the King says, eyes drifting to his son who lies on the ground, still unconscious. “There are still important things you are meant to do.”

_“Please, take care of my son,”_ Regis had said, all those years go.

And Ignis remembers what he’d seen, what that loyal dog of the Oracle had shown him with her dying whimpers. He still doesn’t know what to make of it. He still isn’t sure what it means. He thinks to ask Regis if this is the future that awaits them - that awaits _Noctis_ \- but the words catch in his throat.

_Take care of my son._

Is his fate to fail them both?

He follows Regis’ gaze to Noctis, the Chancellor an imposing figure over him. Ignis is afraid to look directly at Ardyn, afraid that somehow, just doing that is enough to call him into this place when Ignis is still trapped in this moment of pain and Noctis is still vulnerable where he lies.

Noctis, who had told them all to be safe before they’d separated, who had met his eyes with such a desperate fear that Ignis hadn't known what to say other than answer in the affirmative. Noctis, who had been afraid for them, when he went on alone not understanding that every trial he undertook, that every step towards the Crystal brought him closer to a death sentence.

Noctis, who would have to go on alone one day to a place where Ignis couldn’t follow.

But that wasn’t the future either of them had hoped for.

_They had been fishing in the dim light of the sunset at Cape Caem._

_Just the two of them, Prompto and Gladio having retired to camp with mild complaints of boredom and hunger. It must have been only a week ago, but it has the color of a memory that’s many years old._

_“Hey, Iggy,” Noctis had said, quiet and tentative, shoulders stiff as he faced the gently rolling waves. “When this is all over, you’ll stick around, right?”_

_“I don’t imagine I’ll have a choice,” he’d tried, dry and teasing. Noctis had been so somber lately and Ignis would give anything to see him laugh that small, breathy thing he usually did when Ignis teased him._

_“No, I mean,” Noctis frowned. His stiff shoulders shuddered. “You’ll stick around, right?”_

_And he turned to give Ignis a wobbling smile, a wide-eyed look he remembers from their childhood together. From when Noctis was still young and struggling with nightmares in the wake of the attack from Niflheim, the fall of Tenebrae. When they would sit up together in bed, reading stories and passing the time._

_When Ignis would try to say goodnight and Noctis, young and afraid and shouldering so much, would tell him to sleep well and give him that same wobbling smile, that same wide-eyed look. And Ignis had read the plea underneath, the same way he had always been able to read it._

_It always pained him that Noctis thought it was a selfish thing to not want to be alone._

_That he was afraid to ask something as simple as ‘stay with me’ from someone he trusted, and yet wanted to with such fervent desperation._

_“I will,” Ignis had answered there at sunset on the shores of Cape Caem, throat tight. “I’ve already promised as much, haven’t I? I’ll… stick around, as you put it.”_

_And Noctis had laughed, that small, breathy thing that flooded Ignis’ chest with warmth every time he heard it. But there was something somber in it, too. Something desperate._

_Stay with me._

_Stay._

Ignis had promised him.

He’d promised to stay with him. When no one else was awake, when no one else would. He would stay with him. Until the very end.

And he will.

If he is the only one standing in Noct’s defense, if he is the only one standing against Noct’s fate, then he will stand by him. He will protect Noctis, from Ardyn and from this future.

Even if it costs him everything he has.

“Be careful,” Regis warns, as if hearing his thoughts. “Noctis has always thought it a painful thing that people were willing to lay down their lives for him.”

“I know,” Ignis admits.

That will be a burden he’ll have to bear as well, now that he feels the dull pain between his eyes start to sharpen to a point. His other self claws at his eyes and from between his fingers Ignis can see flickers of blue flames.

That’s the price, he imagines.

Even so, he swallows around the fear, the panic, to say, “But I don’t intend to die here.”

And he doesn’t. He’ll finish this.

“Good,” Regis says, relief and exhaustion escaping with a shaking breath. He turns to Ignis one final time and there’s the feeling of a moment ending, of a goodbye. “I trust you, Ignis. I’ve always trusted you. And I’ll never know how to thank you for all that you’ve done, but know that I’m proud of the person you’ve become. I'm proud of _both_ of you.”

And for a moment, the pain fades again. Ignis swallows around a lump that’s from a different emotion entirely. He remembers Regis, tall and young and healthy, smiling down at him when he was still a child.

_‘Thank you,’_ Regis would say, warm and kind, when Ignis did something correctly. _‘You’ve done well.’_

It was so different from the curt and off-handed affirmatives of his tutors.

Almost like a...

“When he puts on the ring, will he see you again?” Ignis asks, weight heavy on his chest, if only to know if there’s some comfort he can give to Noctis from this.

Regis smiles, something tired and sad. Ignis remembers it from the days before all this. From the moments in between, when Ignis was older and overwhelmed and Regis would pull him aside as Regis and not the King, would ask _“But how are_ you, _Ignis?”_ with that tired, sad smile. Ignis wonders if he’s known this would happen, all along.

“In time, yes.”

It isn’t much of an answer, but it is the only one he will receive.

The pain between his brows sharpens rapidly and all at once, and he can hear the sound of his own screams crescendo in his ears. His eyes are the price, that much is clear with the way they start to burn and pulse. It’s a pain he’d hoped to never feel again, sharp and severe, and he’s surprised that when his eyes shoot open he can still see. He was certain that his sockets had been burnt empty.

“You may never see again, Ignis,” he hears Regis say, distantly, through the searing pain as his body crumples. “Choose wisely what you look upon.”

He reaches for Noctis.

**Author's Note:**

> ignis: this pep talk with my father figure has given me the strength to destroy the machinations of the gods
> 
> regis, in the Astral Plane: that is my son  
> the past kings of lucis: he's not of royal blood he isn't one of us-  
> regis, pulling out a wallet with pictures of smol!ignis: look at my son
> 
> ANYWAY HAPPY 2018 SORRY to just Wooo bring that right out of the Gate WhoOOOOO 
> 
> leave me a comment or give me a lil yell on [tumblr](http://brosura.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/bigkatsanctuary)!


End file.
